On Feb 15, 2025, at 6:17 PM, Jason McKemie
<j.mcke...@veloxinetbroadband.com> wrote:
This seems about par for the course with these guys. Scary stuff.
I love how this administration uses the term "maximally
transparent", or some derivation thereof everywhere they can. I
guess if you say it enough, it must be true, right?
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 5:59 PM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com> wrote:
https://www.wired.com/story/doge-website-is-just-one-big-x-ad/
DOGE’s Website Is Just One Big X Ad
*The source code for the new Department of Government
Efficiency’s “official US government website” points to X as
its primary source of authority, while sharing links to the
site sends users to x.com <http://x.com>.*
At a press conference in the Oval Office
<https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/tech/elon-musk-x-oval-office/index.html>
this
week, Elon Musk promised the actions of his so-called
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
<https://www.wired.com/tag/doge/> project would be “maximally
transparent,” thanks to information posted to its website.
At the time of his comment, the DOGE website was empty
<https://bsky.app/profile/joncooper-us.bsky.social/post/3lhwsmk4iac2u>.
However, when the site finally came online Thursday morning,
it turned out to be little more than a glorified feed of
posts from the official DOGE account on Musk’s own X
platform, raising new questions about Musk’s conflicts of
interest in running DOGE
<https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb>.
DOGE.gov claims to be an “official website of the United
States government,” but rather than giving detailed
breakdowns of the cost savings and efficiencies Musk claims
his project is making, the homepage of the site just
replicated posts from the DOGE account on X.
A WIRED review of the page’s source code shows that the
promotion of Musk’s own platform went deeper than replicating
the posts on the homepage. The source code shows that the
site’s canonical tags
<https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization> direct search
engines to x.com <http://x.com> rather than DOGE.gov.
A canonical tag is a snippet of code that tells search
engines what the authoritative version of a website is. It is
typically used by sites with multiple pages as a search
engine optimization tactic, to avoid their search ranking
being diluted.
In DOGE’s case, however, the code is informing search engines
that when people search for content found on DOGE.gov, they
should not show those pages in search results, but should
instead display the posts on X.
“It is promoting the X account as the main source, with the
website secondary,” Declan Chidlow, a web developer
<https://vale.rocks/>, tells WIRED. “This isn't usually how
things are handled, and it indicates that the X account is
taking priority over the actual website itself.”
Advertisement
All the other US government websites WIRED checked used their
own homepage in their canonical tags, including the official
White House website. Additionally, when sharing the DOGE
website on mobile devices, the source code creates a link to
the DOGE X account rather than the website itself.
“It seems that the DOGE website is secondary, and they are
prodding people in the direction of the X account everywhere
they can,” Chidlow adds.
Alongside the homepage feed of X posts, a section of Doge.gov
labeled “Savings” now appears. So far the page is empty
except for a single line that reads: “Receipts coming soon,
no later than Valentine's day,” followed by a heart emoji
<https://www.wired.com/story/heart-emoji-lost-all-meaning/>.
A section entitled “Workforce” features some bar charts
showing how many people work in each government agency, with
the information coming from data gathered by the Office of
Personnel Management in March 2024.
A disclaimer at the bottom of the page reads: “This is DOGE's
effort to create a comprehensive, government-wide org chart.
This is an enormous effort, and there are likely some errors
or omissions. We will continue to strive for maximum accuracy
over time.”
Another section, entitled “Regulations,” features what DOGE
calls the “Unconstitutionality Index,” which it describes as
“the number of agency rules created by unelected bureaucrats
for each law passed by Congress in 2024.”
The charts in this section are also based on data previously
collected by US government agencies. Doge.gov also links to a
Forbes article from last month that was written by Clyde
Wayne Crews, a member of the Heartland Institute, a
conservative think tank that pushed climate change
disinformation
<https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/heartland-institute-leak-exposes-strategies-of-climate-attack-machine/>
and
questioned the links between tobacco and lung cancer
<https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/heartland-institute/>.
It is also a major advocate for privatizing government
departments
<https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/in-shift-key-climate-denialist-group-heartland-institute-pivots-to-policy/>.
The site also features a “Join” page which allows prospective
DOGE employees to apply for roles including “software
engineers, InfoSec engineers, and other technology
professionals.” As well as requesting a Github account and
résumé, the form asks visitors to “provide 2-3 bullet points
showcasing exceptional ability.”
The website does not list a developer, but on Wednesday, web
application security expert Sam Curry outlined in a thread on
X <https://x.com/samwcyo/status/1889527715029557607> how he
was able to identify the developer of the site as DOGE
employee Kyle Shutt.
Curry claims he was able to link a Cloudflare account ID
found in the site’s source code to Shutt, who used the same
account when developing Musk’s America PAC
<https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-america-pac-election-denial-community-x/>
website.
On Thursday, Drop Site News
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/doge-fema-funding-access-social-security-numbers>
reported,
citing sources within FEMA, that Shutt had gained access to
the agency’s proprietary software controlling payments.
Earlier this week, Business Insider reported
<https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-staff-list-white-house-2025-2>
that
Shutt, who recently worked at an AI interviewing software
company, was listed as one of 30 people working for DOGE.
Neither Shutt, DOGE, nor the White House responded to
requests for comment.
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